I wish Joe the Plumber would return to Ohio, raise his daughter, root for the Buckeyes and never impinge on our national consciousness again.

We all remember how a floundering John McCain, whose wavering and inconsistent response to the financial crisis drove his poll numbers ever lower, embraced this bald figure and used him as an ever-more-absurd prop to argue that Barack Obama’s proposed tax policies would hurt the middle class. Although McCain’s references to Joe in the second televised debate were hardly to be taken seriously, Joe turned from “middle-class small business owner concerned about, one day in the far future, paying more taxes, and even if he doesn’t want to pay more taxes, is worried about the implications of Obama wanting to ‘spread the wealth around’”… to right-wing media celebrity. But with Obama winning the election and then sailing into office with sky-high approval ratings, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher’s act got distinctly old.

But he’s back.

He’s now not the last, desperate hope for a flailing and failing campaign, but instead he’s the leader of a movement of conservatives to outflank and replace the traditional, “mainstream liberal media.” Or, to be more specific, he’s a foreign correspondent in Gaza. He was sent there by Pajamas Media, a right-wing Internet media organization founded in the wake of conservatives bloggers’ takedown of Dan Rather.

Joe’s purpose was to “go over there and let their ‘Average Joes’ share their story,” as he told WNWO-TV in Toledo, Ohio. Once he got to Israel (specifically the southern region of Sderot, which has been plagued by rocket fire from Hamas) he began to not only interview Israelis, but make absurd pronouncements like calling an Israeli journalist anti-Israel and solemnly declaring that “I don’t think journalists should be allowed anywhere near war” and, more specifically, “I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting.”

Although it would be nice to attribute Joe’s detestation of press freedom to the fact that he’s a unlicensed plumber playing journalist in an absurdist media stunt, his trip to Israel is indicative of how conservatives view the press and how they plan to approach the Obama administration.

It makes sense that Pajamas Media, which views itself as the vanguard of a conservative, new-media friendly alternative to the dreaded mainstream media, would choose the weeks running up to Obama’s inaguration to engage in such a stunt. They have good reason to believe that mainstream journalists, many of whom personally adore President Obama, won’t be particularly kind to conservative views. What’s worrisome for everyone, liberal and conservative, is just how much the conservative movement has invested in Joe the Plumber.

One would think (and hope) that a conservative movement that had suffered two humiliating elections, supported a president with record low approval ratings and is now faced with the responsibility of opposing a popular and historical figure like Obama, would think seriously about building the most credible, respectable and effective media apparatus possible.

I guess not.

It’s instructive to look at the last time the conservative movement had to face a Democratic president. With Bill Clinton, conservatives had already blown their load on mini/non scandals like Whitewater, Travelgate and Troopergate. Most spectacularly, they implied that Vincent Foster, Clinton’s Deputy White House Counsel, didn’t actually commit suicide. By the time a sitting president was caught with his pants down lying to a grand jury, the public actually supported him in the face of yet another Republican witch hunt.

Now Joe’s more than just a campaign prop. Eek. Photo by ronnie44052 on flickr, licensed under the Creative Commons.

With Joe, it looks like conservatives are only slightly changing their previous strategy. Instead of trying to dredge up real stories to discredit Obama (which laughably failed during the campaign), liberals or the mainstream media, they are instead relying on setting up a phony dichotomy between regular folks and the dreaded cultural elite. Or as Michelle Malkin put it, “the very idea of a non-credentialed public figure attempting to ‘do journalism’ has catty elite journalists hacking up hairballs.” Just as picking an uninformed, unqualified vice presidential nominee only made sense if you view the role of vice president as someone to whip up resentment of cosmopolitan elites — especially mainstream journalists — anointing Joe the Plumber as a shining example of citizen journalism only makes sense if your conception of journalism has nothing to do with actually informing the public.

The elevation of Joe the Plumber from campaign prop to avatar of conservative journalistic opposition to the mainstream media is particularly depressing in light of the genuinely positive advancements in both conservative journalism and in non-credentialed, citizen journalism. For example, the Washington Times, the conservative alternative to the Washington Post, hired John Solomon, a former Post reporter, to be its Editor-in-chief ; it even adopted a new, slightly less crazy and offensive style guide which indicated an elevated level of seriousness about their commitment to journalism.

As far as non-credentialed, citizen journalism goes, the Huffington Post is miles ahead of Pajamas Media. Huffington’s Off the Bus project, which was the brainchild of New Media guru and NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, started with the idea that campaign coverage would be better if it was done by thousands of observers who didn’t necessarily view themselves as “journalists” or “reporters.” And although Huffington’s audience (and one imagines their contributors) skew liberal, the biggest scoop of the Project — his infamous “bitter” remarks — was incredibly damaging for Obama. I understand why Pajamas didn’t follow the Washington Times, but it seems obvious that a conservative Off the Bus would probably accomplish more than sending Joe to Israel.

I don’t think Joe the Plumber will have much influence on his own. His stunt is too obvious and his 15 minutes are quickly ticking away. But he’s a good indication of the direction the conservative movement has decided to take in response to the Obama presidency. And it should worry everyone, no matter what their politics.